The Black Flag

Jesse Patrick Cash was born in a small town just north west of Ft. McMurray, Alberta. His father was the kind of man that could best be described as a right wing oil baron. Their great grandfather was the brother of Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first premiere of that province and their family was very well connected to politics in the region. It was his father's vision that prepared the way for Alberta's current economic growth but to Jesse, his father was a tyrant who often literally took him out to the woodshed and beat him with a stick when he was unhappy with the boy.

When Jesse was 15, his father was running for a seat in the Social Credit Party, a political group that held great power in Alberta during the 40's, 50's and 60's. Social Credit is a socio-economic philosophy in which consumers, provided with adequate purchasing power, establish the policy of production through exercise of their monetary vote. They firmly believed that banking institutions were behind many of our modern economic woes by claiming ownership to the money they create. William Forsberg Cash was a powerful man with powerful enemies and the stress of his daily life inevitably landed on the shoulders of his son until the day he ran away. After an argument at the Party office, Jesse went home, packed his bags and never saw his father again. His mother was a simple farm girl with a great wit and a big heart but she was from a very old fashioned, Christian family and never took a stand against her husband. To this day Jesse has not seen either one of them.

For the next five years Jesse travelled across the country. He was already violent before he left home, but travelling through the roughest country roads of Canada honed his fighting and survival skills. He worked whatever jobs came his way and stole what he needed if it was required. Even during these early years some part of him was protecting the innocent; he would often pick fights with people that would prey on those weaker than themselves. It was during these years that he first met Snowfall, the magician who would become his only friend. At one point Jesse spend a few months in Texas and Mexico where he met Mister Eight, a man who would become his teacher after he gained his powers.

Right before his 20th birthday Jesse took a job on an Alaskan fishing boat. While docked at a small port, Jesse made the worst mistake of his life, he picked a fight with a truly bad group of men. The leader of the group, a monstrous bear of a man, was also a police officer. The beating he took was life-threatening, he only survived because the bartender called an ambulance before the men were finished with him. His injuries were so severe he did not wake up for four months; a piece of his skull had to be removed to take the pressure off his swollen brain. The right side of his face had to be reconstructed, the right arm was so damaged the doctors had to remove bones from his legs to repair them. Unable to walk and terribly scarred, Jesse sat alone in a little hospital in Alaska, contemplating whether he even wanted to go on living. And then Dr. Kelton Nuttall of Chem-X showed up . . .

TO BE CONTINUED